The responsibility for providing high quality careers education, advice and guidance has now been placed directly on schools and colleges in England. To ensure that schools and colleges maintain a high standard of delivery the government’s ‘careers strategy’ includes ‘strongly recommending’ all schools and colleges to work towards and achieve the national Quality in Careers Standard (www.qualityincareers.org.uk). We worked with CSW Group’s ‘Investor in Careers’ team, who act as one of the Licensed Awarding Bodies for the Quality in Careers Standard to create an online application process for their Awarding Body.
The CSW ‘Investor in Careers’ approach to the delivery of the national Standard has become the largest of the Awarding Bodies.
CSW is based in Devon. They recognised that their existing infrastructure to support the assessments in schools and colleges needed modifying, and the challenge they were faced with was how could they expand the number of schools and colleges using their Awarding Body to achieve the national Standard in a way that reduced their costs without compromising on the rigour of their process.
They therefore commissioned AXIA Digital to create an online version of their existing paper-based system. We reflected in full the current processes they use in their assessments and were able to provide additional benefits. Schools and colleges will be able to use a greater range of evidence including adding multimedia files and CSW’s assessors will be able to review the evidence before they visit the school or college, thereby ensuring that they can identify the areas they need to focus upon.